I wrote this guide for business owners and executives who know they should be thinking strategically about their website, but have never taken the time to dig into the question, what makes a website effective?

If you look at marketing the way I do – creating value and telling a story that resonates with people – then marketing and music are cousins from the opposite sides of town. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks of marketing this way. If so, so be it. I'm happy to have a unique perspective on marketing.

Don't be afraid of this new level playing field between you and your buyer. Embrace it! Make it work for you and your business. Add more value to your customers' experience and build your brand into a trustworthy authority in your industry. Your balance sheets will thank you for it.

In the teaching world, the pitch isn't about the supplier at all. It's about the customer... the best sales conversations present the customer with a compelling story about their business first, teach them something new, and then lead to their differentiators. Don't lead with [a solution], lead to [a solution] (Dixon/Adamson p. 74).

Marketing and marketers have an ugly reputation. According to popular opinion, we're pushy, dishonest, manipulative, and greedy. In podcast episode 1, my friend Nick had nothing good to say about marketers' efforts to target children.
And before learning more about the practice of marketing, I would
probably share in this popular opinion. But that's because I didn't
understand what marketing (with a capital M) really was all about.

Yes, non-profits need to have a marketing strategy – not the dark arts
kind of marketing, but the capital M kind of marketing. If you're an
executive with a non-profit you need to define the audience with whom
you want to connect, work to understand their needs, and leverage your
strengths to meet those needs better than anyone else. That's marketing.

There's no doubt that social media has changed the way we communicate.
But human beings are by nature, a social animal.​ We've always been
relational. And in my view (ever-evolving), the presence of new
communication tools does not alter the nature of our relationships to
one another.